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Sunday, 16 March 2014

We had Highway to Hell blasting, we
were on the western side of Renmark and had been making good time. There'd been
a momentary hitch and a moment of levity when we stopped at the quarantine
roadblock for fruit at the beginning of the Riverland. I still had some of my
home grown peaches in a bucket...."can I eat one now?"...."No
you can't , too late, do you have any other fruit and
vegetables?"...."No , we don't " I said. " I need to look in
the back"....There are a couple of issues with the top tailgate on the
F100, firstly, it doesn't lock, secondly, the struts don't hold it up, but
third, and most importantly, if you lift it too high it falls out. The fruit
inspector was very keen to look in the back, which was jam packed with tools
and camping gear, but first he'd have to deal with the tailgate.. By my
estimation he grabbed it with both hands and lifted it quickly. We hadn't yet
got our feet on the ground when we heard a loud "CONK" which was the
sound of the tailgate pivoting in his hands and striking him squarely on the
forehead. My nephew Tom and i arrived at the back of the truck from opposite
sides to see the inspector resting the tailgate on the ground and rubbing his
head, he looked a little ticked off.

"So, are you fellas going to
fix that?" I asked. He shoved it at me, so i repeated the question. He
handed it to me and walked off. It appeared the inspection was over. We put the
tailgate back on with funereal expressions. We laughed for a good three minutes
solid as we drove away.

AC/DC at dangerous volume, but
through it, at the top of a long third gear hill I heard a noise, a sharp
clattering , we turned onto the Goyder Highway and I began looking for
somewhere to pull over, power was down, the beast was wounded. As I stood with
my head under the bonnet a car pulled up, "are you OK?" "Yeah,
we should be right "I said hopefully, "you've got a long way to
go"....he'd recognized the bellytank, he was going where we were going.

We weren't right. We'd blown a head
gasket, punched out the fire rings between 2 and 3 on the right bank, We sat at
a roadside stop and I thought to myself that this year I'd really blown it,
that I wasn't going to make it, that the manic period of preparation, which was
barely enough , was wasted and now I had an expensive problem in the middle of
nowhere.

I didn't know exactly what was wrong
but I knew I could do about 50k's an hour and that giving up was not the
answer, whatever the question was. We set off at about 7pm heading west without a real plan. After an hour I rang Dirty
Dave who was coming to the salt and lives in the Barossa, we changed course and
went south, 170km's to our oasis. We saw 100km/h down a hill at one point but
mostly it was 40-50k's, it took three and a half hours. We got to Dave's just
before midnight.

Dave had planned to leave at sun-up
the next day with his friend Miles in Dave's beat up old Hi-Ace. With a bunch
of phone calls, some expert opinion and some hard yakka we had it back together
by about 7pm Saturday. Then, after starting it and doing a pretension of
the head bolts I broke a rocker stud. We sourced another one ten minutes away , but while fitting it I bent a push rod, we
got another, and a spare from Johnno again, this time we had it together and we
could leave. We'd originally taken the route up the Calder after getting a text
from Graham "the Colonel", it read "roadworks, roadworks,
roadworks" and referred to the western highway, it's a shorter way but
also includes the Pentland Hills, a few of my cars had died there, so the
Calder via Mildura had been confirmed by Damian Moylan, a truck driver as the
better way to go to Port Augusta, especially when towing. So much for that
plan, we were now in the Barossa and the road to "the Gutta" was up
hill and down dale for the first hundred and fifty k's.

When we pulled over for the first
look at the motor I had jammed something up under my right thumb nail, the next
day it was sore but today it was swollen and angry, anytime it touched
something I jumped, so, a suspect motor and a septic thumb, just the right
combo to be heading out to the desert for a week.

We got to Port Augusta by midday and spent an hour shopping and refueling. Dave had stopped
at the first place that had gas.." yeah, we're the only place that has gas
on a Sunday here"....it smelt like rotten chicken and she looked like she
hated everyone. Dave paid 65 bucks for a small cylinder, the next place, and
the two after that had gas, Dave, needless to say made light of it. We split up
for shopping and agreed to meet "at the dirt", the point where you
turn off the bitumen at Iron Knob and head west 165km's to Lake Gairdner.

It's always a great feeling leaving
Port Augusta, it's where the desert really begins and you can't help but be
awed by the size and age of this tired old landscape.

We arrived at the dirt and start the
last checks securing everything and tying a tarp over the car to protect it
from stone damage. Mike Davidson, club Dry Lake Racers of Australia club member number one arrived with his brand new
streamliner "Flatattack", he's a seasoned campaigner but he didn't
look well. He was talking to me as I checked the tie-downs, one of them snapped
back and hit me squarely on the end of my rotten thumb, a ball of pus oozed
out. I broke off the conversation as my body pushed out an allover sweat, I
felt ill, it hurt like it had been smashed with a hammer. I'd been soaking it
in peroxide on the drive from the Gutta, so now at least some of the pressure
was relieved.

The drive in was much as always,
nearly three hours of corrugated, dusty unmade road, we hit a washout about
half an hour in that bounced the trailer off. It stayed on the chains and
didn't damage anything. We arrived lakeside at 6pm
to be told we couldn't drive on til the next day, we set up camp and shuffled
down a few beers, hot and tired. We started early and got the rig out onto the
lake by 7, pitting next to Tiny and Wilso who'd saved a spot for us and Chris
Bryson, or as we call him, "Maxwell Smart". We spent the rest of the
day preparing the pit and the car, much of it cleaning the dust from the drive
in, removing the transport tires and fitting the safety gear. We had a new
trailer this year and it vastly improved the loading/unloading procedure. We
got through tech with just a few issues, no brakes.....We had to bleed the
brake system which consists of drum brakes on the rear, apart from that we were
ready to roll.

We had changed the final gearing of
the car from 2013's 2.41:1 to 2.14:1 skipping the 2.28 gear set we had. Last year
we ran 215.041mph(348km/h). We figured that 2.14 would be too tall, but if the
car wouldn't pull it that it would give us an accurate idea of the cars total
drag which we as yet hadn't been able to calculate..

This is the fourth year we had had
the car there, and I now know that I need at least one run to get over the
willies, it's always the second run when I seem to be able to commit to just
mashing it. This year was the first year we have used first gear off the start
line, the car stepped out to the right as I booted it, then again when I
shifted into second, I wasn't thinking straight and changed too early, at
155mph instead of the planned 175, it bogged and accelerated slowly, tick tick
tick on the mph, it got into the 180's and started to take off but at 190 it
died. I still had a little power but nothing useable, I turned off at the five
mile. When I pulled up I was too close to the second track and had smoke
billowing from the cowl. The fire crew wanted to hit it with extinguishers, I
said no and they waited. For my trouble I got a yellow sticker" CONCERN:
BURNING OIL". We had to tear the car down in order to satisfy the
scrutineers,the smoke was from oil that had soaked into the fiberglass exhaust
wrapping during last year's diff change, while we had it apart we found that
I'd also broken the 1st/2nd gear selector, the manager of the Mt I've station
offered to lend is the part we needed from his eleven year old daughters Holden
Ute, in the end we drilled a hole in the selector, tapped a thread and screwed
the selector back together. The offer of the part was above and beyond but we
were pretty sure we didn't want to be back under a Ute putting it's gearbox
back together on Friday afternoon when we wanted to be driving home. In all it
took about three hours and we had the car reassembled. Chief scrutineer Bob
Ellis signed off on the sticker and we were free to line up again. We'd kept
the same 2.14 gearing in the diff after realizing I had simply run out of fuel
on the first run, yes, at 190mph I simply ran out of fuel.

We were nearly out of the pits when
we turned back, and filled the tank with premium unleaded.

It was Wednesday, we had to get some
track time. Like last year when it came to the second run I was more than ready
to go, the trepidation of the first run was gone. Tom had been elected as the
man to close the canopy as he seemed to be the only one other than me who had
the knack of making it latch. With Dave and Miles pushing I left the line, last
year we'd pushed the car with the truck as I was driving off in 3rd, I was
using first gear this year. I was kind of shocked how hard the car accelerated
off the line, I looked down and despite our best efforts we had managed to
swipe the GPS to the menu screen and I already knew it wouldn't respond to my
gloved hand. I ran up to the pitch I know is close to the red line, the car was
pulling hard, in second it went sideways briefly as I dropped the clutch but I
stayed in it. Once again I ran it into what I hope was the 6000rpm range and
shifted into third, same again, it pulled hard but held traction with my foot
on the floor. I could feel the acceleration in top which was encouraging rather
than the sensation of bogging I'd had the day before. I held my foot on the
floor and listened to the pitch climb until the last mile where it remained
constant. I pulled off the track at the seven and a half mile and this time I
could see the "Bali flags" and knew where to stop. Northern rescue arrived
and gave me the thumbs up, one of them jumped out..."are you OK?
yeah?....you did two hundred and four, congratulations!", he jumped back
in and they drove away.

"So" I thought, that is
the first time we'd hit an aero wall. With the gearing (2.14:1) we had that
speed translated to 5280rpm, at those revs we have about 270 horsepower, it
seems now that at 204mph our car has the equivalent of about 270 horsepower of
drag, until now we'd gone faster and faster, now we knew what the limits were.

We took the car back to the pits and
began to dismantle it to change the final gearing to the as yet untried 2.28:1.
Everyone got dirty, Dave, Miles, Tom, Graham and I. We hoisted the car onto the
metre high stands, off with the body, drained the water tank of its 60 litres,
hoisted it off, hoisted the motor off it's mounts, removed the exhaust, the
gear shift gantry, the furl tank and fuel system, just to get to the diff. It sounds
ridiculous but the car is fast because it is small and has a good aero shape,
to make that possible things need to be packaged very tightly. What does make
things difficult is that the car has been hammered by it's time being
transported on it's four trips to the lake, things don't fit as well as they
used to.

We started at 4.30, working with the
headlights of two cars we finished, exhausted at 10pm. We went back to our camp, had a few beers and crashed by
11.30. We were back on the lake by 6.45, Dave cooked breakfast while we fitted
up the last of the body, refuelled and made some last checks, we were three
groups from the start. There were delays as the track had been move across due
to it's soft condition between the two and three mile where lots of cars had
spun. We wouldn't run until 1pm.

I fumbled with the shift as despite
our prep the car wasn't in first, once, twice, three times, I cursed, I shifted
it into second, the clutch slipped and the stench filled the cab, I bounced it
a few times before I let it out, now the car pulled hard. I ran to 95 mph just
short of 6 grand. In the third the car pulled like a train, the numbers on the
screen reeling, 120, 130 150 160, I shifted into top at 176mph, it took
briefly, and then died, I pulled the clutch, revved the motor and dropped it
again, nothing. I freewheeled for a bit, I was halfway through the three mile.
I shifted back to slow it down. I was off the track by the four and a half. The
crew arrived and it was all in the glance between Graham and I, it was
Thursday, something was broken, the week was over.

Although the best run of 204mph
wasn't as fast as we had run in 2013 we had still made some progress. 2013's
215.041mph was run with a 2.41:1 diff gear and we believed it was a rev limit
in the motor ( valve bounce, lifters we don't really know)that had stopped us
going any faster. Up until this point we had no reliable figure for the drag
coefficient of the car which meant we could not calculate how much power we
need to achieve the speed(240mph) that ultimately we hope the car will run.
When the car ran 204mph with the 2.14 gearing and could not accelerate any
further it told us the power it made at 5280rpm which is about 270hp equaled
the drag at that speed, we will be back, we know more than we did before.

Getting home is always a dose of
reality, it's a week later. the car is still on the trailer but at least I've
washed this stuff off......

The rig. We went through about
$1000USD in fuel....

The Malley country....

Your correspondent, red hat and
all......

The road to Gairdner, wasn't the
worst I'd seen it by a long shot, but that doesn't mean it was good.